Turkey's Place

Updated Nov. 26, 2002 12:01 a.m. ET

In regard's to Michael Gonzalez's Nov. 20 column "Deconstructing Giscard": To me and a few others it is obvious that short-term U.S. geopolitics, oil and its routes to the West are behind the pressure exerted by Washington (egged on by the president's oil friends) to give Turkey a date for the start of membership negotiations in the EU.

To make the short-term Iraq problem a very big reason to start EU membership negotiations is heavy-handed. One could say nothing else, besides safeguarding landing rights for the...